An Evolution thought experiment

[HMS_Beagle]

Really? How does deal with the point I was making? Try responding to my last response to you, instead or arguing by link.

I did respond to your "point" with a brief explanation and a link to lots more detailed information. Why not just admit you have no desire to learn any of the science involved, save everyone some time?

[Omniskeptical]

When given a challenge, Jorge not responds. Jorge doesn't enough science to prove his interpretation of what. Yeah, he doesn't have any theories, just a lot of hypotheses.

[seer]

I did respond to your "point" with a brief explanation and a link to lots more detailed information. Why not just admit you have no desire to learn any of the science involved, save everyone some time?

Stop hand waving and interact with my questions. Show everyone how brilliant you are.

Really? How does this for instance work with sight and the brain's ability to process information form an increasingly complex eye? The eye and visual cortex for instance are not governed by the same regulatory genes - correct? How about between the stomach, small Intestine, pancreas and liver? They are not all controlled by the same regulatory genes - correct? And I'm not sure what you mean by co-opt existing genes. How do smell nerve cells for instance, cause the brain to be able to process smells? It didn't process smells before. What was co-opted and what turned brain cells into smell recognizing cells?

[Roy]

When given a challenge, Jorge not responds.

Possibly. But since you only gave him 18 minutes, it's more likely he was simply occupied elsewhere. He may, for instance, be looking up the exact wording of his Darwin misquote. Or, more likely, browsing a different thread or site or cooking a late lunch*.

You aren't proving you're more scientifically knowledgeable than Jorge, only that you're more desperate.

Roy

*I think I've got the time compensation correct

[Sparko]

When given a challenge, Jorge not responds. Jorge doesn't enough science to prove his interpretation of what. Yeah, he doesn't have any theories, just a lot of hypotheses.

Well at least he can type complete sentences with proper grammar and no missing words, eh?

[Omniskeptical]

Possibly. But since you only gave him 18 minutes, it's more likely he was simply occupied elsewhere. He may, for instance, be looking up the exact wording of his Darwin misquote. Or, more likely, browsing a different thread or site or cooking a late lunch*.

You aren't proving you're more scientifically knowledgeable than Jorge, only that you're more desperate.

Roy

*I think I've got the time compensation correct

I doubt that. But you don't have the goal of getting rid of him either. He can't answer the question, and that is why he is suddenly silent.

[Omniskeptical]

Well at least he can type complete sentences with proper grammar and no missing words, eh?

That is all is good for. Even the most well-known creationists know that.

[rogue06]

I know that you are slower than molasses at the North Pole but just to humor myself:

Once we were told (have you read ol' Charlie's book?) that the fossil record would show innumerable examples of "species slowly changing as new features, species and phyla" emerged. To NOT find this would be a sort of 'falsification' since the opposite of the prediction was observed.

Ol' Charly said (paraphrasing): "Just wait ... when the fossil record is more complete we'll have that evidence."

Okay, almost 140 years later there were tons and tons of fossils. Oops, the evidence showed THE OPPOSITE! "What to do? Abandon Evolution? Are you kidding?!? Evolution is our BELIEF, we cannot possibly abandon that. Okay, so how do we rescue our baby? Ah, Eldredge and Gould invoke SP and call it "Punctuated Equilibrium". Yay, the day is saved ... Evolution stands ... we're such great scientists!"

The moral of the story: Evolutionists plant a goal post - "this will falsify Evolution". Then, when something comes along that throws a monkey wrench into the gears, they dig up the goal post and move it another 20 yards out. "Uhmmm ... THIS will falsify Evolution". On and on and on ...
.
.
.
Related: I'm reading (in the 2nd Edition), the responses that Meyer gave to his critics on his book Darwin's Doubt. It would do all of you a world of good to read that book. That suggestion assumes, of course, that you are interested in the TRUTH on the matter -- an assumption that I know very well does NOT apply to many of you.

Jorge

The problem (well, one problem) with your little rant is that we do have extensive evidence of gradual changes taking place in the fossil record -- specifically among what is known as microfossils like those of the single-celled organisms foraminifera, radiolaria, diatoms and coccolithorids.

As noted by Donald Prothero in his book "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters":

Source: Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters

In addition to their great abundance and diversity, microfossils are ideal for evolutionary studies for several other reasons. Cores of the sediments covering the deep-sea bottom have been taken by rotary drilling and by plunging a long tube into the sea bottom (“piston coring”), and both retrieve an almost continuous record of marine sedimentation over that part of the ocean floor. Some cores span many millions of years with no breaks or gaps what- soever. These cores can be precisely dated by methods such as stable isotope analysis and magnetic stratigraphy, as well as with the biostratigraphy of the microfossil groups themselves. Thus we can trace the history of many microfossil lineages through many millions of years over a single spot in the world, something that is impossible with the much less complete record of shallow marine invertebrates or land vertebrates. Finally, the biogeography of microfossils. Finally, the biogeography of microfossils is relatively simple. Most are confined to a few water masses where the ocean waters are of a given temperature, and these species range over that entire water mass (Prothero and Lazarus 1980).

© Copyright Original Source

A couple decades ago two Florida State marine micropaleontologists, Tony Arnold and Bill Parker compiled what is essentially an intact fossil record for a type of free-floating foraminifera that contains no so-called "missing links." The pair have recorded hundreds of speciation events in the history of the foraminifera they have examined which stretches over a nearly 70 million year period and say that transitional forms between various species aren't difficult at all to detect, making tracking ancestor species to their descendants easy to do.

Here is an example covering roughly 6˝ million years

[Sparko]

That is all is good for.

[Sparko]

The problem (well, one problem) with your little rant is that we do have extensive evidence of gradual changes taking place in the fossil record -- specifically among what is known as microfossils like those of the single-celled organisms foraminifera, radiolaria, diatoms and coccolithorids.

As noted by Donald Prothero in his book "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters":

Source: Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters

In addition to their great abundance and diversity, microfossils are ideal for evolutionary studies for several other reasons. Cores of the sediments covering the deep-sea bottom have been taken by rotary drilling and by plunging a long tube into the sea bottom (“piston coring”), and both retrieve an almost continuous record of marine sedimentation over that part of the ocean floor. Some cores span many millions of years with no breaks or gaps what- soever. These cores can be precisely dated by methods such as stable isotope analysis and magnetic stratigraphy, as well as with the biostratigraphy of the microfossil groups themselves. Thus we can trace the history of many microfossil lineages through many millions of years over a single spot in the world, something that is impossible with the much less complete record of shallow marine invertebrates or land vertebrates. Finally, the biogeography of microfossils. Finally, the biogeography of microfossils is relatively simple. Most are confined to a few water masses where the ocean waters are of a given temperature, and these species range over that entire water mass (Prothero and Lazarus 1980).

© Copyright Original Source

A couple decades ago two Florida State marine micropaleontologists, Tony Arnold and Bill Parker compiled what is essentially an intact fossil record for a type of free-floating foraminifera that contains no so-called "missing links." The pair have recorded hundreds of speciation events in the history of the foraminifera they have examined which stretches over a nearly 70 million year period and say that transitional forms between various species aren't difficult at all to detect, making tracking ancestor species to their descendants easy to do.

Here is an example covering roughly 6˝ million years

So THAT is how Garlic evolved!

[Omniskeptical]

That is all he is good for. I have a headache today, so my grammar is suffering.

[Sparko]

That is all he is good for. I have a headache today, so my grammar is suffering.

Maybe you should take a break from the computer. They can strain your neck and eyes and give you headaches.

[rogue06]

The problem (well, one problem) with your little rant is that we do have extensive evidence of gradual changes taking place in the fossil record -- specifically among what is known as microfossils like those of the single-celled organisms foraminifera, radiolaria, diatoms and coccolithorids.

As noted by Donald Prothero in his book "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters":

Source: Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters

In addition to their great abundance and diversity, microfossils are ideal for evolutionary studies for several other reasons. Cores of the sediments covering the deep-sea bottom have been taken by rotary drilling and by plunging a long tube into the sea bottom (“piston coring”), and both retrieve an almost continuous record of marine sedimentation over that part of the ocean floor. Some cores span many millions of years with no breaks or gaps what- soever. These cores can be precisely dated by methods such as stable isotope analysis and magnetic stratigraphy, as well as with the biostratigraphy of the microfossil groups themselves. Thus we can trace the history of many microfossil lineages through many millions of years over a single spot in the world, something that is impossible with the much less complete record of shallow marine invertebrates or land vertebrates. Finally, the biogeography of microfossils. Finally, the biogeography of microfossils is relatively simple. Most are confined to a few water masses where the ocean waters are of a given temperature, and these species range over that entire water mass (Prothero and Lazarus 1980).

© Copyright Original Source

A couple decades ago two Florida State marine micropaleontologists, Tony Arnold and Bill Parker compiled what is essentially an intact fossil record for a type of free-floating foraminifera that contains no so-called "missing links." The pair have recorded hundreds of speciation events in the history of the foraminifera they have examined which stretches over a nearly 70 million year period and say that transitional forms between various species aren't difficult at all to detect, making tracking ancestor species to their descendants easy to do.

Here is an example covering roughly 6˝ million years

From a post I made on the pre-crash Tweb concerning Punctuated Equilibrium and Gradualism:

There are still papers being published on fossil data that shows that gradualistic evolutionary change is still recognized as completely legitimate: Gradual evolution in bacteria: evidence from Bacillus systematic and here is an earlier one: Parallel gradualistic evolution of Ordovician trilobites. And perhaps you might want to read this as well:

Source: Large Punctuational Contribution of Speciation to Evolutionary Divergence at the Molecular Level

A long-standing debate in evolutionary biology concerns whether species diverge gradually through time or by punctuational episodes at the time of speciation. We found that approximately 22% of substitutional changes at the DNA level can be attributed to punctuational evolution, and the remainder accumulates from background gradual divergence.


Source

© Copyright Original Source

In fact, Eldredge and Gould went out of their way to repeatedly point out that “Punk Eek” in no way supplanted gradualism but worked alongside of it as Donald Prothero notes in a review of the subject:

Source: PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM AT TWENTY: A PALEONTOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE, pages 42-43

As Gould and Eldredge (1977) pointed out in their five-year retrospective on the debate, it's easy to pick one specific example of either gradualism or punctuation, but the important issue is one of generality. Which pattern is dominant among the species in the fossil record, since both are known to occur? If you sample all the members of a given fauna, which pattern is most common? In the twenty years since the paper, more and more case studies have been generated, and by now a pattern seems to be emerging (Gould, 1992; Stanley, 1992).

It is now clear that among microscopic protistans, gradualism does seem to prevail (Hayami and Ozawa, 1975; Scott, 1982; Arnold, 1983; Malmgren and Kennett, 1981; Malmgren et al., 1983; Wei and Kennett, 1988, on foraminiferans; Kellogg and Hays, 1975; Kellogg, 1983; Lazarus et al., 1985; Lazarus, 1986, on radiolarians, and Sorhannus et al., 1988; Fenner et al., 1989; Sorhannus,1990, on diatoms). As discussed by Gould and Eldredge (1977) and Lazarus (1983), this may be due to the fact that most of these organisms are either asexual clones, or show alternation of of sexual and asexual generations.


Source

© Copyright Original Source

So the observations actually reveal that both take place. It isn't an either-or situation but rather a complementary one. So as Prothero notes, Eldredge and Gould were aware of examples of both gradualism and PE, and like everyone else, wondered "which pattern is dominant." ... The only question that remains is which process is the dominant one.

Source: Is evolution gradual or punctuated?: Large Punctuational Contribution of Speciation to Evolutionary Divergence at the Molecular Level

A long-standing debate in evolutionary biology concerns whether species diverge gradually through time or by punctuational episodes at the time of speciation. We found that approximately 22% of substitutional changes at the DNA level can be attributed to punctuational evolution, and the remainder accumulates from background gradual divergence.


Source

© Copyright Original Source

Further, the fact that organisms can evolve at different rates is exactly what Darwin predicted:

Source: On The Origin of the Species, First Edition

”Species of different genera and classes have not changed at the same rate, or in the same degree. In the oldest tertiary beds a few living shells may still be found in the midst of a multitude of extinct forms. Falconer has given a striking instance of a similar fact, in an existing crocodile associated with many strange and lost mammals and reptiles in the sub-Himalayan deposits. The Silurian Lingula differs but little from the living species of this genus; whereas most of the other Silurian Molluscs and all the Crustaceans have changed greatly.”


Source

© Copyright Original Source

[HMS_Beagle]

Stop hand waving and interact with my questions.

I did. I can't interact any more until you get off your lazy can and learn some of the actual science. Only then we can have an informed discussion. But you don't want to learn what actually happens in biological development, you just want to validate your ignorant misconceptions. That's why you refuse to read the information provided.

[seer]

I did. I can't interact any more until you get off your lazy can and learn some of the actual science. Only then we can have an informed discussion. But you don't want to learn what actually happens in biological development, you just want to validate your ignorant misconceptions. That's why you refuse to read the information provided.

Well I started a new thread, feel free to answer the questions, but if this is what you are going to continue with please stay out.